HTC Vive price, release date and specs

Steam VR and the HTC Vive is HTC and Valve’s entrant into the VR space. It’s up against competition from the Oculus Rift and somewhat by Sony’s Playstation VR (although to be honest the PS4 is hardly powerful enough to drive a VR experience). The HTC Vive was initially unveiled at GDC 2015 and is advertised as a “premium experience” over its competitors.

Why buy a Vive?

Valve’s key selling point of the Vive is that it’s a room-scale experience. The headset comes with two “Lighthouse” base-stations which project tracking signals throughout the room. An array of cameras on the headset keeps a track of these signals, allowing the headset to work out it’s orientation, along with its position in 3D space. This means that, unlike other headsets, the Vive allows you to walk around the room while using it, peer around corners and the like. We’ve tried it and it really is immersive; more than you’d expect – as is usually the case with VR.

HTC Vive price and release date

HTC CEO Cher Wang, while speaking to The Telegraph, announced that HTC Vive pre-orders will start on February 29, 2015. The headset’s still on track for release in April – the same time as the Rift. For now, there’s no word on the price but we’ll let you know as soon as possible.

It’s never a good idea to speculate, but HTC did say they were aiming for a more premium VR experience – so expect it to cost more than the already surprisingly expensive £530 Oculus Rift. This price is understandable – it does pack a fair bit more tech into it like the Lightouse base stations, all of the cameras on the outside of the headset, and the recently added passthrough camera allowing you to exit the VR experience temporarily without taking off the headset.